“May I ask how many people work in the research lab?” she asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” her guide responded. “Probably around thirty? You’d have to ask the director, or you’ll be able to find that all out yourself once you’re situated.”
As they continued down the hall, she heard a few more people speaking German. Now, she was really confused—not to mention concerned that someone had screwed up and taken her to the wrong base. “Pardon me,” she began and prepared to ask the sergeant about the matter.
Then, the lights went out. Her mouth dropped open and her question died on her lips. Almost immediately, the sudden blackness was replaced by the cold glare of emergency lighting combined with flashes of red, and a buzzing, abrasive siren activated. This seemed unlikely to be a good thing.
“Shit,” Wendell said. “Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He ran off before she could think of a reply.
Laura watched him go, then watched the other people who all seemed to have places to hurry to now that there was some kind of emergency. She felt a little stupid, standing there doing nothing.
She looked both up and down the hallway and her eyebrow arched. Nothing caught her attention or suggested itself as an opportunity to make the best of her time.
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips and chewed gently on the inside of her mouth. It seemed dumb to linger alone in the hallway and Sergeant Wendell had shown no signs of returning. She decided moving was a much better alternative and wandered toward a large, open door.
The room beyond was some kind of vehicle bay or large garage. The sparse emergency lights and red flashers made it more difficult to see than she’d have been able to in normal lighting, but she could still make things out well enough.
“Well, don’t I feel like a schoolgirl again,” Laura said under her breath.
She had never seen vehicles like this before. Some of them were clearly tactical ground-based trucks or armored personnel carriers of some kind. Others looked more like motorbikes. A few looked like hovercraft or even…spacecraft? She stared, both fascinated and amused.
Intrigued, she wandered over toward one of those that looked vaguely like a Star Wars fighter or something, but smaller and shaped differently. Come to think of it, there was no way it could be a fighter. What was it? Part of it looked almost like it was made of some form of plastic, rather than metal. Curious, she reached out to touch its hull.
“Stop!” someone snapped. “Attention! Achtung!”
Laura looked up and glanced around, squinting in the weird lighting. From across the room, a man strode toward her at a brisk, purposeful pace. A stout-looking woman whom he’d obviously been with hung back and watched in silence.
“Hello,” Laura greeted the man and hoped he hadn’t mistaken her for someone who might be doing something wrong. “I’m new here. Could you please tell me what this is? Ridiculously enough, I thought it looked rather like a Star Wars fighter, but then I thought maybe it resembled—”
“You are violating one of the rules of my base,” the man interrupted in a clipped German accent. “Are you aware of this?” He was trim, dark, probably in his early forties or thereabouts, and rather handsome, she decided. When he looked at her, it was with a kind of low-level imperious disdain.
She merely stared at him in return and wondered why he’d asked her what seemed to be a dumb question. Besides, she had no idea why a German should act as though he were somehow in charge of a British base.
“Rule Number Forty-Two. No unauthorized personnel are to touch military equipment,” the man went on. “And that especially includes transportation. There is very delicate and important technology here and we cannot have either civilians or rookie soldiers interfering with—”
“Now w-w-wait a minute here,” Laura stated shakily and tried her best to put on an angry voice. She pivoted away from the vehicle to face him and attempted to act suddenly furious. Her voice rose in force and volume too fast for her to catch it and drag it under control. “You can’t go around arse-whipping people for breaking rules when the rules aren’t even posted somewhere. Who the hell do you think you are?” She took a deep breath to calm herself. For some reason, being angry at someone—even if it was only an act—was strangely satisfying.
The man paused as if about to explain to her who the hell he was, but his thoughts seemed, for the moment, to have become entangled on her statement about the rules being posted.
“I’ll have you know that I’ve worked extensively in administration,” she continued, determined not to give the man the opportunity to regain control of the pleasant discussion they’d begun having. “If there is some kind of numbered list of rules, all personnel should receive a copy of that list before they even arrive at the base. How in God’s name can they be expected to know what they are and follow them? Without that, people will be in violation of them all the time. And it will take forever for everyone to learn what they are since their only method of learning will be to systematically break each one without even realizing what they’re doing.”
She hoped she hadn’t gone too far, but she had learned the best way to work with people in authority was to stand up for herself from the outset.
The German blinked as though the mental script being used by the computer program in his brain had encountered a line of error code and needed to reboot. “Now, Miss…” he started to say and raised a hand with one finger extended, but that was as far as he got.
“Furthermore, what are your credentials? And if you’re in charge here, why didn’t you come to greet me at the front door? I would have thought that the arrival of an important new researcher would warrant some kind of proper welcome,” she said with a grin to try to lighten the mood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
Sighing huffily, she turned and walked away, her high heels clicking on the floor as she strode toward the large open door back to the hallway. The German officer, whoever he was, stared after her in slack-jawed silence.
Chapter Six
Jan watched her storm off and wondered who the hell she thought she was.
Behind him, a sudden snorting sound rapidly transformed itself into a peal of barking laughter, as though Leutnant Ferris had tried to hold it in but had, after a titanic struggle to which all her self-control had been committed, failed.
“With all due respect, Hauptmann,” she said between further barely suppressed snickers, “you were bitch-slapped by a civilian in heels.”
He turned to look at Ferris, puzzlement evident on his face as he pointed to the rapidly departing woman. “What type of imbecile wears heels to a military base in the desert?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question, of course. The answer was either self-evident or beyond the ken of mere mortal humanity.
Nonetheless, The Bull answered. “That type,” she offered and gestured sharply toward the door through which the ridiculous English woman had departed.
Self-evident it was, then.
“Well, she has worked extensively in administration,” he repeated in English, mimicking her tone before he lapsed back into German.
“Hah!” The Bull laughed. “Next time you run into her, you should say something in Urdu about how your father was a Muslim.”
“I might actually do that.” He sighed. “In any event, let the foolish scientist fumble about. We have to prepare. Once this lockdown is over—and it’s very likely another false alarm—we have yet another rescue mission to undertake.”
“Oh, is that the American team that got lost?” she asked.
“Oh, no, of course not,” he replied. “It’s the German team that went in after the American team that got lost.” That group had left a couple of days before and still weren’t back.
“Klaus’s team, then. Hah! That does not surprise me.”
“Does anything?” He waved a hand in disgust. “And don’t answer that,” he went on. “Now, gather the team—the same one as before, more or less, should suffice. Rotate a few men as needed, but I want a
ll the same Feldwebel. Unless they’re already out with Klaus trying to stop him from getting killed, anyway. Those men know the Zoo and know my command.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferris responded.
“I have to make a phone call. I will join you in a few minutes.” He nodded and they parted ways for the moment. The Bull hurried away to assemble—or rather reassemble—his platoon.
Jan headed to his office as it was the best place to talk on the phone. Not only would the background noise provided by the lockdown alarms be less obnoxious and intrusive there, but it would also afford him privacy. It did not look professional for an officer to wander around chatting on the phone where the enlisted men might see him.
He arrived in his office and found it a much-welcomed oasis of relative peace and stability. Archway was—thanks largely to himself—a fairly well-run facility, but even he could only impose order to a certain extent. Chaos always found a way to slip between the cracks and gradually expand its influence.
Leutnant Ferris, excellent junior officer that she was, had once again organized his notes in a neat pile on the edge of his desk. He very quickly flipped through them. They were all reviews but still important. That done, he took his cell phone out and activated it.
After scrolling through the rather more professional contacts, not to mention the names of two of his three ex-wives, he stopped at a number next to the name “Michael.” Jan hesitated for a moment. He was fairly sure it was up to date since the boy’s mother had begrudgingly given it to him only five months before, but he had never actually called the number in question. For that matter, he hadn’t spoken to his son at all in a good two years.
He tried to remember what time it would be in Germany. Deciding that it didn’t really matter and that there was no point in any further hesitation, he tapped the number.
There was silence for a moment before the sound of ringing began. It continued while he drummed his fingers on his desk, tapped his foot, and stared vacantly at his medals. The phone rang persistently and finally, it cut to the automated voice messaging system. He pressed the End Call button, took a breath, and tried again.
While he listened to the phone ring uselessly and repetitively, he thought back to what had happened in the Zoo. At the time, the experience hadn’t disturbed him much, but the reality was that he had almost been killed. If that devilcrow had surged from its little ambush a second or less earlier, he might well now be dead. If Ferris hadn’t noticed the creature at the same time that he had and acted as quickly as she had, he might well now be dead. If he had grown complacent by the amount of damage the two of them had managed to inflict on the beast and had failed to realize that it was about to mount that final, jaw-snapping desperation attack and acted accordingly, he might well now be dead.
Death was always a possibility. He knew that. And despite his inner romantic streak, he was not, by nature, the sentimental type. Yet the thought of dying without having cleared the air between himself and Michael was…unpleasant. Unbecoming was the word that sprang to mind. It offended his sense of decorum or something, he reasoned.
“Pick up, Michael,” he muttered.
His son did not answer. The ringing ceased once again and directed him to the boy’s automated voice message system. This informed him helpfully that the person he was trying to reach was not available and asked him politely if he’d like to leave a message. He frowned and decided he probably should leave one.
The tone beeped. Jan opened his mouth but no words or even sounds were forthcoming. He tried frantically to think of what to say. Nothing in particular suggested itself and the best he might manage was to state who he was and point out that he had tried to call—all of which Michael was probably smart enough to figure out on his own.
Perhaps the boy would try to call back later.
He pressed the End Call button again and frowned. While he could simply send a text message, that seemed awkward. Instead, he sent one to Angela that requested politely that she have Michael call him when he had the chance as he needed to ask him something—what he’d like for his birthday, for instance. That sounded reasonable and legitimate.
A little disgruntled, he powered his phone down and put it away. He supposed he should have known that even trying would have been a waste of time, really. With his usual single-minded sense of purpose, he pushed this brief experience out of his head and tried to focus on all the other things he had to worry about right now.
The job came first. He needed and even wanted to focus on the job and the task at hand. It was simple, in a way. He understood it and recognized what he had to do. Not only that, he knew he could handle it, and as long as he stayed sharp, it was well within his capabilities to succeed once again.
Jan took his sidearm—a fairly standard black semiautomatic pistol—out of its holster and checked it to ensure that it was clean, loaded, and in sound working order. It was, although that wasn’t a surprise. Reflecting again on his near demise by devilcrow, he decided that this time, he would make sure to have extra rifles on hand to use in the event of an attack.
The German Bundeswehr continued to use the latest version of the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle, as it had for many years.
Recent improvements had resolved most of the issues the older models had—the worst of which was a loss of accuracy at a longer range, which was, of course, exacerbated during overheating.
Then again, in the Zoo, the fighting was almost always in dense areas of the jungle.
Long-range accuracy wasn’t really needed. Most of the troops were trained to use burst fire in preference to full auto, which reduced the likelihood of overheating anyway. The Americans had recently switched to some newfangled weapon called the M-92, which held forty rounds rather than thirty and was somewhat larger-caliber than their older guns, in addition to being compatible with the ammunition the Russians used. It had performed well and there was talk of switching all Zoo forces, regardless of national affiliation, to using it as their standard-issue firearm. When and if that day came, he would adapt as he always did. But until then, the Heckler & Koch seemed perfectly acceptable.
He left the office and closed the door behind him, prepared once again to address the troops and lead them into hell’s arsehole. He merely hoped that Klaus hadn’t already taken his best Feldwebel and led them directly to their deaths.
Chapter Seven
Following the unpleasant exchange with the German officer, Laura continued down the hallway in the same direction that Sergeant Wendell had originally escorted her. There were other, perpendicular hallways that branched off to other parts of the base, but she decided she could wait to explore those. Keeping to a straight line made it less likely that she’d get lost in this massive place, anyway. She found herself wondering which cardinal direction it was she moved in. Finding that out would be useful later on.
They were still in emergency-lighting mode, complete with disorientating red flashers that lent an air of urgency to the situation and the maddening and insistent buzzing of the base-wide alarm.
What is going on?
When she paused and looked around, she saw a man standing in a small alcove near the doors to what she somehow assumed was the cafeteria or the mess hall or whatever it was they called it. The man was perhaps thirty-five or maybe closer to forty-five and carried a noticeable load of extra pounds, although he appeared built to support it well enough. He had not shaved in two or three days and an old, faded tattoo traced up his forearm. A white cook’s hat barely concealed a receding hairline. His pale, watery blue eyes were surrounded by rose-colored scleras. Despite his slightly disreputable appearance, an easy, congenial vibe emanated from the man. He seemed approachable, more or less the complete opposite of Captain Stick-Arse in the vehicles room.
Encouraged, she approached him. “Excuse me,” she called and stopped a few feet from him. She plugged the ear farthest from him as she leaned in to talk. “I’ve just arrived here. Could you tell me what’s going on?” She scrunched
her face and looked around before she turned to him again. “Are we in some kind of danger? The alarms have gone on for so long, the base should’ve have gone up in a mushroom cloud by now.”
The man watched her speak with a kind of amused half-comprehension and she began to wonder if he was another mysterious German when he opened his mouth and laughed out loud.
“Mushroom cloud…now that’s a good one. Maybe one of these days, a bug attack during a power outage will have that effect. Right now, though, it seems we don’t even have the bug attack, so that’s only half the equation right there. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, ma’am.”
She laughed, glad to hear a Cockney accent again. “Is it really only a power outage, then?”
“That it is,” said the man. “I’m Sonny, by the way. You’d never guess, but I’m a cook here.”
“Well, wearing a cook’s hat would seem to be an excellent way to ensure people never guess,” she replied. “I’m pleased to meet you, Sonny. I’m Laura—Laura Curie. Well, I am hungry, and you look like the kind of person who appreciates good food, especially after a…uh, smoke. However, I have to meet the director soon, I’m afraid.”
“That’s quite all right, Miss Laura. I can’t do much in the kitchen right now anyway. We’ve had these bloody awful power failures now and again lately, and every time we do, the whole base goes into lockdown mode until the regular lights are back on. Most of the crew go to their emergency stations, and no one comes in or goes out. One of Captain Jan’s rules, that is.”
“Captain Jan…” Laura mused, her lips pinched. “I strongly suspect I’ve already met him.”
The chuckle was mirrored in his eyes. “He caught you breaking one of his four thousand and one rules, did he?” the man asked.
“Something like that.” She nodded. “What is a German officer doing strutting around a British base, anyway?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to Mr. Roden about that. The director. You said you were going to see him anyway, didn’t you?”
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